Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/286

260 sisting in the nomination of Marcy as Governor and of Van Buren as Vice-president. This was a little too much for Webb, the proprietor of the Courier and Enquirer, and he and Bennett parted, Webb preferring to be the shining hght of his own paper. The ill-feeling between the two began when Webb heard that Bennett was to start his own paper. This he did in 1832, establishing the New York Globe as a two-cent paper, but it received neither popular support nor that financial assistance that he believed would be forthcoming from his political associates.

When the first number was printed, November 29, 1832, he declared that for eight years he had labored in the cause of democracy,—he omitted no year that could possibly be counted, not even his year as a ship news reporter—that he had assisted in the election of Jackson and the advancement of Van Buren and that now he was through with politics. His next venture was in Philadelphia, where he invested, in a paper called the Pennsylvanian, the small sum of money which he had saved.

If his experience with politics and politicians had been disappointing in New York, it was bitter in Philadelphia. After he had sunk his own money, he needed a further sum of two thousand five hundred dollars, and applied to Van Buren and another political associate for it. After some correspondence, it was refused. From that time on, James Gordon Bennett was through with politics.

We have seen that the penny press, as it was called, originated in Philadelphia. Bennett, while there, gained some knowledge of Dr. Conwell's experiment with The Cent. When he came back to New York the Sun was the talk of the town, or at least, of the profession. The following year a paper called the New York Transcript